Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Well this past week was an exciting one - I got my first commission to bake someone a dessert! I was elated, because I have been considering expanding my baking into a part-time business, so this gave me the opportunity to try it out.

I met the woman who commissioned me at a party a couple months ago, and she asked if I’d be willing to make her a pie for her birthday. I was thrilled at the opportunity and agreed immediately. She then told me all about the wonderful pie she wanted.

It’s called the “Fat Elvis Pie” and she saw it on the Food Network. It consists of a pretzel-peanut-graham cracker crust, a chocolate pudding-type layer, a layer of bananas and a peanut butter cream pie topping. It sounded amazing! And I had never really attempted a pie like this before, so I was ready for the challenge.

I did a lot of research: watched clips from the show, looked up recipes for all the components (I couldn’t find a single recipe for the whole pie, so I had to take 3 different ones!), looked at pictures and went to the website of the bakery that originally made the pie – I wanted to make sure I got this at least somewhat right. I wanted everything to be homemade and wasn’t going to cut any corners! Since I couldn’t find an exact recipe, I’m calling this pie my own, except, I decided to call my pie the “Slightly Overweight Royalty Pie”.

So here are the recipes I used. After making the pie once, I realized where I would have changed things in terms of the assembly, so I’ve included them at the bottom.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

This week, my baking challenge was to combine some of my friend's favourite treats into one ultimate dessert. She isn't a fan of cake, but she does like cheesecake and brownies - so I needed to find a way to combine them.

After a bit of searching on the Internet, I found a recipe for Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake from one of my regular cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen. The task seemed a little daunting - making brownies, a chocolate crumb crust and cheesecake? This was going to take all week!

So I started on Tuesday making the brownies. I used my fall-back brownie recipe that makes deliciously fudgey brownies. All the ingredients are just thrown in one bowl so that made step 1 a little easier.

Wednesday was cheesecake day. I decided to modify the crust recipe from Smitten Kitchen, because I was making mini-cheesecakes and in the past my crusts have been very soggy. The cheesecake recipe was very basic - just 4 ingredients - so I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. However, it would make my life easier, so I decided to give it a try!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

I have been wanting to make mini pies for a couple weeks
now. I had seen a picture of them on Pintrest and thought they were just the
cutest things ever - so I had to give them a try! Have you ever noticed that if
you miniaturize anything it instantly becomes 100x times cuter?

Well, I finally got around to making them today since I had a
relaxing Sunday all to myself and had some leftover pie crust sitting in my
freezer.

The recipes are from all over the place, so this is more a
tutorial on how to make mini pies. You can use which ever crust and filling
recipes you prefer. Just make sure you finely dice all the fruit in your
filling (if it has any) so it will fit into smaller crust. I will provide you
with the recipes I used, but honestly just let your creativity run wild!

Friday, February 10, 2012

One of my goals
in baking is to create an arsenal of tried-and-true
recipes. Recipes that, if ever the need arises, are guaranteed to be the most delicious thing you've ever tasted!

This is a recipe I recently added to my list - carrot cake! This is my future
brother-in-law's absolute favourite cake, and with him asking for it on his birthday each year, I’m sure I’m going to get plenty
of use out of this recipe! I myself wasn’t a big fan of carrot cake when I was
younger - vegetables did not belong in desserts - however, I think a cake like this
could change anyone’s mind.

My future
brother-in-law doesn’t like pineapple, nor raisins, in his carrot cake, but he's ok with nuts, so I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com that fit that criteria. I followed the reviews posted with the recipes for modifications to make it amazing, and I have to say it worked! Here it is: